Ostranauts News

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.14.0.17 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which includes some new UI feedback to help players, fixes for some FUNDS and trade UI bugs, repair permanently slowed characters, and other fixes.

These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.

• Added an objective alert (similar to collision/low atmo) when player does something potentially illegal.
  
• Added a tooltip over all humans to show more info on what they are thinking and doing, to help players manage them better.
  
• Added code to fix characters with too much work or movement penalty caused by saves from 0.14.0.15 and earlier.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused napped players to permanently get slowed after their first nap expired.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused napped players to fatigue faster.
  
• Fixed a bug that could incorrectly account for first or last day of month in FUNDS UI.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused gas containers to ignore the cost of the gas inside (making it cheaper to buy new than refill).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused autopilot to use dangerously high accelerations in final leg of its trip.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused mortgage ledger item to disappear to a previous page if the user prepaid on any shift after mortgage began.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused unpaid ledger items to apply fees to incorrect shift/date.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ledger page to advance 2 shifts if the Next Shift button was pressed while in Untime.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the ledger UI to ignore the first click on previous shift arrow when opening it in Untime.
  
• Fixed a bug that skipped hourly fees when using super FFWD.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the sale of data files from within a locked PDA if that was inside another container.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused PDA files not wanted by the trader to be sold anyway after deselecting their container in the trade UI.
  
• Added a way for players to tell crew to stop following someone without the captain present to do so.
  
• Changed the data file trade UI behavior to only sell directly to the player, and not barter zones, due to several issues with detecting appropriate barter zone containers.
  
• Fixed a null exception that could occur when PDA data file text required resizing in the UI.
  
• Fixed a bug that limited datafile containers to a maximum of 35 items.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the player to teleport to a distant object when cancelling actions in a certain order.
  
• Fixed a bug that could knock players out of secure seats when maneuvering.
  
• Added code to the NAV station to cancel auto-zooming if the user starts manually zooming.
  
• Fixed a bug in the NAV station that produced infinity/NaN values if they zoomed out too far.
  
• Changed the Blisters condition to be visible on characters.
  
• Changed the use position on the fusion fuel regulator to be more reachable from all sides.
  
• Changed Play Game action to be slightly less attractive to AI.
  
• Changed Study Book action to be slightly less attractive to AI.
  
• Added better feedback for why a character cannot begin studying right now if that is the case.
  
• Fixed trade UI error message alignment.
  

Because many players are finding they are wanted without knowing why, we added a new objective alert to let them know immediately when something they are doing might be considered illegal. It is similar to the low atmo and proximity alert objectives that appear for a short period, then go away.

We also added a new tooltip on all characters to help players better understand what that character is doing and planning. Since many issues stem from the AI not doing what the player expects, this should help uncover what might be stopping them.

The Napping effects in older saves could add permanent work and movement speed penalties, among other things. And this patch fixes both that bugged outcome, as well as repairs old saves affected by it.

The FUNDS UI had a number of issues involving dates, particularly when crossing over the end/beginning of a month, or the Untime shift. Not to mention several bugs that could cause mortgage and other fees to get hidden in the past, causing unexpected late fees.

This patch fixes those issues and more, making the FUNDS UI more reliable.

Selling PDA data files to traders also had a few bugs, including the ability to see inside locked containers, selling files when none appeared selected, and ghost files appearing in the world. This patch addresses many of those data-file-specific issues.

Plus, there are several fixes for NAV UI, AI overusing certain actions, and other issues.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.14.0.15 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which includes fixes for misbehaving police, NPC ship behaviors, crashes, and other issues.

These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.

• Fixed a bug that could cause game to hang if character was knocked out from gravity.
  
• Added REDACTED for when player gets too close to REDACTED.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause NaN gas amounts when a room synced with void atmo.
  
• Fixed a bug which spawned 1036 Ganymed (OKLG's asteroid) at twice the correct size.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused maintenance techs to be hirable.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused maintenance techs to overpopulate some stations at the expense of others.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Caps Lock hotkey to cycle through entire police/pirate roster if one was selected.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented cycle crew hotkey from showing the player in cases where the player had no other crew, and was stuck on an off-screen ship.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to long for a better love life while unconscious.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPC collisions with the station if player was there and no ship was docked.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed NPC ships to keep flying even if crew was knocked out.
  
• Changed the quick action button list to only show plot actions if both player and target are not currently replying to each other.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed NPC ship to message player ship when nobody on board was conscious.
  
• Fixed some trader buy/sell lists including invalid items.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused NPCs to spawn dragging ABL Wall Liners around.
  
• Fixed several items producing wrong components when damaged or destroyed.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused cargo pods and windows to become wrong variant when damaged.
  
• Fixed missing log text color for removing very bad conditions.
  
• Removed several placeholder and other unused items from the game data.
  

[h3](Un)Docking Changes[/h3]

• Fixed a bug that could cause NPCs to fly around as if undocked, while another ship was docked to them.
  
• Fixed a bug that could prevent AI ships from undocking if they were shallow loaded.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed NPCs to dock with player ship if they were knocked out, dead, or NAV was missing.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause NPCs to remain sitting at their NAV endlessly after docking.
  
• Fixed a bug that could allow AIShip to dock with a target if self was already docked full.
  

[h3]Police Changes[/h3]

• Fixed a bug that could cause police to ignore player after docking with them for a police action.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused OKLG arrest encounter to leave the player wanted if they chose to pay in installments.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause an officer to get stuck questioning the player if the player saw officer as friend, but it was not mutual.
  
• Added code to help officer recognize wanted suspect during shakedown.
  
• Added a way for police to end the interrogation peaceably if they have no accusations or beef with the player.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused police to undock with player aboard after finishing questioning/fine.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused police to forget their shakedown pledge after they complete it the first time.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused player to become wanted when undocking from a police ship, even if police were dead or KO.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause police to fail in interrogating the player if save game was loaded while police was on player ship.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause LEO to get stuck ordering player to stop there, under arrest, if save was loaded during a shakedown when an arrest started.
  
• Fixed a bug that would leave police officer on player's ship after player went to jail or used ferry.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused police to resume interrogating player if player teleported to jail then docked with that police ship again.
  
• Fixed police ships to have more space between terminal and chair, to prevent NPCs from dismounting into the wall/terminal.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused police to go into arrest mode again immediately after arresting player.
  
• Added code to help police exit arresting mode during shakedown if target is no longer a criminal.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause crimes to be ignored if player was standing under certain appliances (e.g. air pumps) or walls were too close behind them.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause attacks to be ignored if player was standing under certain appliances (e.g. air pumps) or walls were too close behind them.
  

Probably the biggest collection of changes in this patch center around police behavior. We received a wide range of bugs involving police, and this patch tries to address as many of those as we could.

This covers police getting stuck in interactions, paying fines having no effect, police not seeing the player doing crime correctly, police absconding with the player aboard their ship, and more.

We also included some code to try and self-heal save games from these bugs, though it is important to remember this patch may not cover 100% of cases. Generally speaking, if you try to either finish the current police interaction, or run away (triggering a warrant), things should eventually get back on track and behave normally in affected saves.

This patch also includes a bunch of fixes for NPC ships with unconscious or dead crew, as well as issues with docking and undocking. This should hopefully result in fewer cases of ships doing things that shouldn't be possible.

There was at least one bug fix in here which addresses the game freezing, and sometimes crashing to desktop. This was caused by an infinite loop when the player was knocked-out due to high Gs in such a way that sleeping relieved pain, woke them up, that caused pain again, they knocked-out, etc.

OKLG's asteroid was also spawning at twice its correct size, and new games should now see that correctly. This might prove to change how you see the boneyard quite a bit, literally!

Also, a special "treat" was added near REDACTED :)

Finally, there were a range of other bug fixes from big to small.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.14.0.14 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which includes some optimizations for the game's performance.

These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.

• Changes Visibility calculations to update render textures less often.
  
• Changes CondOwners to reuse more temporary values instead of allocating new ones each check.
  
• Changes non-parent CondOwners to skip checking for children in function calls to reduce unnecessary processing and allocation.
  
• Changes Star System to reuse temporary values instead of allocating new ones each frame.
  
• Changes Zones to check for matches in an order that should null out earlier when possible, reducing allocation/processing.
  

As you can see above, this is mostly behind-the-scenes changes aimed at helping with the constant stuttering and other performance issues.

Feedback from testers so far seems to indicate that this sometimes improves things, but it can vary from game-to-game. Many of these changes affect certain, intermittent events that can lead to stutters. But your experience may depend on how often those events are happening in your game.

One thing is for sure, though, we still have more work to do on this. So optimizations are not "finished" yet, and will likely involve a series of incremental improvements before we get there.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.14.0.13 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which addresses several gameplay, plot, and save issues, adds some new music and dead crew handling, and other fixes.

These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.

• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to create extremely large save files after visiting certain Venus stations.
  
• Changed the way cargo market data is saved to result in smaller save files.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused save files to fail loading if a progress bar couldn't find its target.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause AI to pause for a long time after installing short-duration installs, repairs, etc.
  
• Fixed a bug that made FFWD unusable due to a ship closing on player and never arriving.
  
• Fixed a null exception that could occur if spamming the Esc key between Game Over and Main Menu.
  
• Added code to prevent plots from using the same person as both client and target party.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented NPCs from sharing clues in whodunnit plots.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented handling of company roster, salary, and death pay when crew died.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to fire dead crew.
  
• Added code to play sad music when player crew dies or quits unhappily.
  
• Added code to alert player via message log when crew dies on current map.
  
• Added occasional docking music when player's ship receives docking clearance from a station.
  
• Changed AI reply obligation code to allow one reply to satisfy every subject it was a valid reply for, and not just the first one found.
  
• Fixed a bug that could prevent NPC ships from requesting Hauler/Refueling help.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPC ships to deny docking clearance to player after requesting player's help.
  
• Fixed a bug in the amount of RCS fuel NPC ships requested that caused it to request the wrong units, and therefore, amount.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPC ships to not undock after fuel transfer was complete.
  
• Added missing Dismantle action for Bunk (Bed01Off and Loose).
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the player to teleport to a strange position when canceling and/or restarting a canceled action.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause an NPC ship to suddenly appear in the player's path after a Super Fast-Forward.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused helmet don and removal audio to ignore volume sliders.
  
• Fixed a bug that failed to accrue late fees if super FFWD jumped a large enough span of time.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the ledger to show debts as credits in some cases, like the medical kiosk or visa kiosk.
  
• Fixed the work speed from Refreshed/Napped conditions (was add a penalty instead of removing it).
  
• Changed the way cargo market data is initialized to produce more organic random supplies at the beginning of a game.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the ship broker drone cam feed to be broken.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused sleeping or dead characters to appear standing/dragging after loading a save.
  
• Fixed a typo in the Fuel Regulator description.
  
• Fixed a typo in admire actions.
  
• Fixed a bug that left NPC's footprints behind when they died.
  
• Fixed missing Treadmill (Off) portrait.
  
• Fixed wrong Battery S/XS Loose portraits.
  
• Fixed a NavStation bug that could cause the MFD panel to blink between mainmenu and error rapidly.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the cargo pod UI to have a misaligned icon.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ship room snapshots to be broken.
  

Some of the bigger fixes in this patch address overinflated save files. In one case, anyone visiting certain Venus stations would trigger a save file where every individual object on the station was a member of the police force, causing a huge company roster in the save file. In some cases, this file had a company so large the game couldn't finish reading it.

The fix will prevent that from happening in the future, though existing saves may be out of luck. If your save file still loads, you're probably okay. But if it failed to load due to size, you might have to load an earlier save (before visiting Venus stations), or hand-edit the save file to remove those entries, since we don't have a reliable way to automatically clean that data yet.

The other change to save files adjusts how the cargo market saves their inventories, and is now compact. This is a smaller optimization, but will improve all save files going forward.

We also fixed a number of null exceptions and other errors that could cause the game to get stuck during play, or save files not to finish loading, and other issues. If your save file got stuck for one of these reasons, they should now load normally.

A number of fixes involve crew death, where until now, they remained in your company, drawing a salary, and you could then fire the dead body and get your death pay back. (But if you lost the body, you were out of luck.)

Now, crew is officially cleaned-up in your company roster, and appropriate ledger entries are kept vs. removed. And, unfortunately for capitalism, you cannot fire the dead body anymore to avoid paying out death pay :)

As part of this, we also added code to cue sad music when your crew dies or quits in anger. As well as comforting music (sometimes) when you dock at a home station.

Through some helpful bug reports and reproduction clues, we were finally able to figure out why some tasks caused the AI to just stand there after each install. Often for 30s or more, despite having work settings and tasks lined-up.

This turned out to be a special case which only came up when the install process took exactly one cycle, and essentially left the AI thinking there was still more to be done, despite the job being finished. This patch includes a fix, and you should now see your AIs rapidly go through short-duration installs and other tasks.

The plot system also received some attention, fixing the bug that could cause the person contacting you to choose themselves as a target. While this was sometimes funny, it kind of ruined the immersion. NPCs should now appropriately ask you for help with *other* NPCs when they contact you.

And related to this, we found and fixed a bug in the whodunnit plot that caused NPCs to refuse to give out clues. Unhelpful! They should now more freely give clues to the murder when applicable.

The Super Fast Forward feature was being blocked in some cases by a ship that had the player targeted, even though that ship was unable to approach the player. This patch catches that case, so players can once again FFWD.

And related to this, sometimes NPC ships were teleporting in front of the player after using FFWD, which is also now fixed. This happened due to an NPC the player agreed to refuel being left behind, but persistently just kept teleporting to be near the player.

While fixing the above, we also fixed a number of bugs we found in the whole NPC refueling exchange. So this should be operating more smoothly now.

There were a few issues with the ledger UI either showing the transfers under the wrong heading, or missing late fees on certain FFWD events. These should now be fixed.

And there were a range of other fixes, ranging from missing actions on things to audio glitches or graphical problems, which should all also be fixed now.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. We plan to focus on fixes, quality of life, and general build hardening for the short term, before we begin work on the next milestone.

In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC

Hey Folks!

Ostranauts v0.14.0.12 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.

This is a hotfix patch to our recently released "Across the System" update, which addresses several save game and UI lockout bugs, and several fixes to plots and items.

These changes should be compatible with older 0.14 saves. Though if that save has already had errors (e.g. like dead NPCs), some of those errors may continue until a new game is started.

• Fixed bug allowing some social/plot interactions to be used on corpses (awkward Lonesome IAs and most plot actions)
  
• Changed NPC ships to not KO/injure their crew when flying around for now, as it was more disruptive to play than useful.
  
• Changed AtmoScrubber/CO2 alarm to fire at 0.3 kpa instead of 0.5 kpa (gives some space before people feel first hypercapnia symptoms at 0.5).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused captain to be immovable after a reload if game was saved on a different ship from captain while they slept.
  
• Fixed an error that could occur if player or other pathfinder was standing in a place with no walkable tiles nearby.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented NPCs from continuing the plot being upset about wrongful accusations if the NPC was on the same ship as the player.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused UI to get locked out after loading a save where an objective had a null target.
  
• Fixed several attack mode typos which could cause wrong attack modes to remain on the character after unslotting weapons.
  
• Added code to immediately refresh quick action buttons when a new weapon is wielded.
  
• Added code to remove unapplicable attack modes from players due to old save data.
  
• Fixed bug causing red & green custom lights to become normal lights when (un)powered or uninstalled.
  
• Added CO2 sensor connections to AtmoScrubbers on VORB_Port (and add CO2 filter spawners).
  
• Changed OKLG_Entrance AtmoScrubber to On instead of Auto to better manage CO2 when population gets high.
  
• Changed wiring on OKLG_Entrance AtmoScrubbers to 2 sensors (and add CO2 filter spawners).
  
• Added paperdoll sprites for the slugger bat, cutlass, and nightsticks.
  
• Removed PressureSense from Closed Auto-Vent (it doesn't need it, so sensing is just a performance tax).
  

A number of the changes in this patch address various save/load and UI lockout issues. Many of these were null exceptions that could arise if the game attempted to access something that no longer existed, and it could stop the game from proceeding (whether that meant finishing loading the save, or accepting user input).

There are no doubt more of these to find and fix, but players have been very helpful (and patient!) with finding these edge cases.

A few of the other fixes address actions that were either appearing on things they shouldn't (conversing with corpses, stabbing with a gun), or missing (plot failed to proceed because of a typo that forbid the player being where they were).

As part of this clean-up, we added some additional code to make the list of actions on a target update more immediately when switching weapons.

Yet another cluster of fixes involved items that were either not fully hooked-up to infrastructure (CO2 sensors), mode switched incorrectly when losing power (colored lights), or simply used too many resources (closed auto vents). Plus, we have a new batch of paperdoll sprites for the slugger bat, cutlass, and night sticks!

Finally, we disabled gravic injuries and knock-outs on NPCs when they were flying ships off-screen. We may restore this later when it matters more (i.e. ship combat), but for now, it was getting in the way more often than being fun. E.g. pilots being unconscious or dead when you dock with them, despite them calling you over.

As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!

Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC